Authorities believe that Barriss made a hoax phone call that sent police to the home of an innocent man, Andrew Finch, on December 28. Finch opened the door with his hands up. But when he briefly lowered his hands toward his waistband, a police officer shot him, believing that Finch could be reaching for a gun.

The incident appears to have originated with an online feud over a $1.50 Call of Duty bet. One of the parties to that dispute reportedly approached online user SWAuTistic, who had a reputation for initiating "swatting" pranks against online gamers. SWAuTistic called the Wichita police, pretending to be a deranged man who had already shot his father and threatened to shoot other members of his family.

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But the intended target of the attack lied about his address, providing the address of the Finch residence instead of his own. That's how police ended up in a standoff with Finch, who had nothing to do with the online dispute.

"They call it swatting," she added. "I didn't even know it was a thing."

"I love swatting kids who think that nothing's going to happen," SWAuTistic said in a YouTube interview conducted after Finch's death.

The arrest and charging of Barriss indicates that authorities believe he is SWAuTistic. Barriss is also accused of making a very similar call to police in Calgary a week before the Wichita shooting—though thankfully nobody died as a result of that call. He also pled no contest to calling in a bomb threat in Glendale, California, in 2015.

Court records show that in addition to the manslaughter charge, Kansas officials have charged Barriss with giving a false alarm and interference with law enforcement. The Kansas prosecutor in charge of the case told the Los Angeles Times that Barriss could face more than 11 years in prison if convicted of these charges.

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My comment from an earlier thread, explaining why he was charged with just manslaughter and not felony murder (which is any killing that occurs during the commission of a felony):

In some states, the felony murder rule includes a causation element to establish awareness of potential physical harm (because, for example, a person committing felony tax fraud probably couldn't forsee their actions actually getting someone killed). Not all states even have that, but some do. The court would then have to ask if the facts of the defendant's felony were such that injury or death was a foreseeable consequence.

Kansas, however, dealt with this issue another way. Kansas lawmakers created a specific list of felonies that they felt create such a risk, and said the felony murder rule only applies to those felonies. That list is called "inherently dangerous felonies" but it's a rigid list. There's no causation test, any death that results during a felony in Kansas is felony murder, but only if it's one of the listed felonies. Even though the felony false alarm in this case was inherently dangerous (since it was deliberately worded to provoke a guns-drawn response), it just isn't on lawmakers' "inherently dangerous felonies" list.

So prosecutors can't use the felony murder rule. They have to fall back on what they can show directly, which is the swatter's recklessness or negligence regarding the risk of death he created. That's what involuntary manslaughter is under Kansas law. A death you didn't specifically intend, no intent to commit a violent crime, but a death you still caused with your reckless or negligent disregard for human life.